A Tale of Two Cities

The artist Liu Xiaodong uncovers common themes of migration, community and belonging in two major new series, even though their subjects—rich and poor—paint vastly different stories

- Oliver Giles

Liu Xiaodong spent the spring of 2019 in his Beijing studio, painting monumental portraits and landscapes from photos he had taken that year on a trip to the US-Mexico border. He spent months trying to capture the arid, cactus-studded Texas terrain, the faces of migrants who had been arrested for crossing the border illegally and the uniforms of the American policemen who locked them up. In June, Liu decamped to London, where he set up his easel in plush homes in the city’s ritziest boroughs, painting wealthy Chinese expats who call the British capital home.

The stark disparity between these places was not lost on Liu, 56. Within six months he had gone from meeting desperate asylum seekers in the Chihuahuan Desert to sitting in leafy west London with entrepreneur Veronica Chou, daughter of billionaire textiles tycoon Silas Chou, and eating dim sum in Mayfair with Victoria Tang-Owen, creative director of Shanghai Tang. But he did not dwell on it. “I’m used to dealing with all sorts of people,” Liu says, speaking through an interpreter. “I deal with people who are extremely, extremely wealthy and the poorest people on Earth. But people are people. What matters to me is how they behave and the way they conduct themselves in their lives, not their personal wealth.”

In fact, Liu explains, it was not what divided these groups that interested him, but what they had in common. “My work is always about movement, about migration,” he says.